


The Stench of Stagnacia

by SilverWolf7



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Bad Smells, Farming Town, Gen, Humor, Macra, Posting here for easier access, not on earth, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 02:03:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11818920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverWolf7/pseuds/SilverWolf7
Summary: Two, Jamie and Victoria find themselves in a town with a surprise waiting for them underneath it.Macra.





	The Stench of Stagnacia

There was something undeniably wrong with this situation.

It wasn’t that everything around them was huge, or that they had shrunk, because neither of those things were true. It was the god awful stench of rotting things everywhere, even though there was a thriving township near where the TARDIS had landed.

The people were humans, most likely. It was always humans in the Doctor’s case, except when it wasn’t, and then it was something completely different altogether. Either way, Victoria was holding a handkerchief to her nose and was coughing into it, while Jamie was making odd faces.

“Aw, what is that stench, Doctor?” Jamie asked, coming over to stand where he was, and looking to where the township’s main building was located.

“I don’t know yet, Jamie. But I do intend to find out. Do you want to go back in the TARDIS, Victoria, or are you coming too?”

“Oh, I want to come. It’s just, I don’t think I have ever smelt something so foul as this. And my father had made some unbelievable messes in his time.”

“Yes, I believe he must have at one stage, being the type of man he was. Well, onwards then. Let’s see what we can find out.”

The walk was only a short five minutes, but the closer they got to the town hall the more they slowed down. The smell was even worse over here and, though it could have been the Doctor’s imagination, he swore he could see fumes coming from holes in the ground.

Caves then, with some sort of gaseous entity, or just very bad sanitation. He didn’t know which, but he was bound to find out soon enough. How a village could survive this long with that hanging around was an oddity in itself.

“The sky is all hazy here. Is it meant to be like that?” Victoria asked, her voice muffled by the cloth covering her mouth and nose in an attempt to keep away the smell.

“You see it too then. Good! I thought it might just be me. Well, it looks like it is coming from under the town, but it might do us well to investigate a bit above ground first. Come on. Not too far now!”

Within another five minutes, the doors into the town hall closed behind them and a lot of the stench that hung around in the air outside disappeared with a blast of cool, fresh air. It wasn’t completely gone, he hadn’t expected it to be, but it was better than it was by far.

“Well, I’m glad that’s over for the time being. Now, to find out where we are.”

No one was in the little front room, but there was a small row of seats, of which they made good use. Running about outside with that kind of stink took a lot more out of one’s stamina than he had originally given thought.

“Doctor, what do you make of this place? It’s a bit big to be on top of all that stink, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps, Jamie. Get your breath back a bit and then we’ll ask someone.”

It was Victoria who hopped up first, even though she was the one that had been doing most of the complaining. “Some water would be nice. I’d like it clean, though. Do you think this town has clean water?”

“I’ll go with you!” Jamie stated, jumping from his seat, and trotting off over to a door opposite the one they had used to enter the building. Victoria rolled her eyes, sighed loudly and took off after the boy.

“Ah, the impulsiveness of youth. Well, better get to seeing what I can find out then.” With that said, he got up off the seat he had slumped in and made his way through the door. The rooms beyond were huge, much like he expected a town hall to look like, but a bit more high tech than he had originally thought.

There was a strong air conditioning service being in use, possibly on all the time, so that clean well filtered air was what they got inside, as opposed to what you got outside. Everything was either white, or light shades of cream. In an odd way it reminded him a bit of the TARDIS, except not as upscale or as complicated.

There were quite a few people milling about in here, since it also seemed to have the secondary job of housing the town library. He made his way over to the nearest person and smiled at the woman. “Hello. Nice day, isn’t it. Can you tell me where I might get information as to why there is some type of gas leaking out into the town?”

He got a frown for that one, like as if he was stupid. Keep people on their toes. Make them think that. It’s a good way of getting one up on them later, especially if they are not exactly friendly.

“Where the heck have you been living for the past ten years? You won’t find that information in a book, we live it day by day. It’s what they live off, you see.”

“They?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Go ask someone else, and stop bothering me, this is a library!”

“Yes, so it is. Alright then, I will leave you to your reading. Good bye.”

He didn’t get an answer in reply to that, but wasn’t expecting one. That was alright, though, as he had just spotted Jamie off to one side arguing over something with Victoria. He could tell it was an argument. Jamie’s arms were getting rather lively.

Walking over to them, he caught the tail end of the argument. Something about nothing it seemed. Literally. They had found out as much as he had from people just as helpful.

“Well then, looks like there’s only one thing left to do it seems. Come on you two, back outside to explore some caves. But first, the TARDIS for the right...equipment for the job.”

None of them were too happy with the trek back to the TARDIS, but once he had some masks to cover their faces and a clean air supply connected to them, his two young companions felt a lot better about going back outside. He would have gone back out anyway, regardless, but it was nice to know he wouldn’t be doing so alone.

After half an hour of scrounging around for an access point underground that was big enough for them to squeeze through, they were dirty and hot, but still able to breathe fresh, clean air. They had also learnt a bit about whatever ‘they’ were. ‘They’ were a noisy bunch of animals by the sounds of it.

It made him half remember something, and by the way Jamie was being all fidgety, it reminded the boy of something too. The problem was he couldn’t remember what exactly it reminded him of.

Victoria kept on whispering things about giant rats. He doubted they were that. The gas would drive them away. But he was sure that whatever it was, it was definitely a giant something. He frowned as he poked his head down what appeared to be a big enough crack for a huge animal to slip through, only to find that it widened right out with barely a drop to fall.

“Come on you two! I found our path down. Looks like the locals might have made this one, as it isn’t natural. We’re on the right track.”

In a few minutes, torches shining into the darkness, all three of them were following a trail he had spotted and descended further into the ground. If it wasn’t for the torches they had started carrying around since it seemed that more than likely they’d need one sooner or later on their adventures, they wouldn’t have been able to see it, but thankfully they did and skidded to a stop.

Blocking the path was a giant crab.

Jamie turned tail and ran, and Victoria wasn’t far behind. He couldn’t blame Jamie for the action really, since it was the boy who had almost died several times at the claws of these creatures once before.

Macra they were called. A giant crab-like race that fed off of gases and fumes.

The town must have been built on top of a colony and not known it. Digging could have brought about the fissures that had started the gas to leak out, and like all sensible humans, they had decided that they’d rather put up with the smell than go and find some other place to live that had a better air supply.

This one must have ventured too far away from the gas that it lived off of. One thing he had found interesting by Jamie’s telling of the last time was that they became inactive without it. Too long without, and they’d die.

This one was just sleeping though, inactive. Waiting for the gases, or another of its kind to help it back to its home. But it was too far away from the caves near the town where the gases seem to have come from.

“Well, what am I going to do with you?” he asked it, before turning around and heading off to find Jamie and Victoria. He’d need help for what he planned to do. He just hoped his plan didn’t backfire and get them all eaten.

He found them further down the tunnel, stopped for a breather and wondering where he had been.

“Doctor, you’re not serious, are you? You can’t! It’ll eat us,” Jamie stated, quite loudly, and with much more of his Scottish accent showing than normal, due to fright. Poor lad didn’t admit to being afraid over much. The first Macra adventure must have spooked him a bit more than he had originally thought.

“This must be a natural planet for them, Jamie. It’s not attacking the town, the people are safe. It’s going to die if we don’t help it, and it hasn’t done anything wrong. We wouldn’t have to push it too far, only enough that it wakes up and can move on its own.”

“What if it turns around and decides to come after us?” Victoria asked, her eyes wide with the thought of being eaten by a giant crab.

“Then we’ll be killed in a horrific and painful way. They can’t eat us, but that doesn’t mean they can’t skewer us on their claws now, does it. Come now, don’t worry. It won’t. It’s been too long since it has been unable to move. It will probably go back to its cave to eat. If what they do can even be classed as eating.”

“Great. You’re dragging us along on another of your crazy plans, Doctor. Can’t we just leave it to die? Go back to the TARDIS?”

He raised his eyebrows at that. “Jamie! I’ve never heard you talk quite like that before to something that is not necessarily evil. Well, not that I know of anyway. It needs help, and I tend to give it the push it needs.”

“I’ll help you, Doctor,” Victoria stated, walking to his side and smiling. “It’s better to at least try to get it on its way then leave it to die. It hasn’t done anything to hurt us or the town, so why not give it a chance at life?”

“Very good, Victoria! So, are you coming along Jamie or will you wait here?”

Being shown up by a girl didn’t sit too well with Jamie’s pride and so reluctantly, the boy joined him too, and they turned to go back down the tunnel to do what they did best. Save something in need of help.

The Macra, as he had thought, was still in the same spot it had been in since he had left, not having moved an inch away from where it was before. Careful of the sharp claws on its front arms, he, Jamie and Victoria slowly and carefully turned it so they were looking at its back instead, before they began pushing it down the tunnel it had come from.

It was slow work moving it, but after a few metres, it began to sluggishly move its arms, before it found its legs and as fast as it could scuttled away from them and down the tunnel. Just as he had thought it would.

“See, there it goes! No harm done to it or us. I’d say that was a success, yes? Now come on, back to the TARDIS to tidy up a bit, and then we’ll see what this town is all about.”

They made it to the TARDIS without any trouble, and by the time they were clean and in fresh clothing, they were all feeling good about what they had just done, even Jamie, who he suspected now had a phobia for crabs.

After dressing and making sure that the TARDIS was locked, gas masks unfortunately left behind as it would be a bit disrespectful t the townsfolk to wear them in the town itself, the three of them made their way back down to where they were hoping to get a nice meal and a bed for the night.

If all succeeded and went to plan, they didn’t have to live on the TARDIS all the time, and it added that extra touch of realism to the adventure of exploring a new planetary place. There was nothing quite as refreshingly bad as having to live like the locals.

Especially if the locals had to put up with this god awful smell.

It was Victoria who spotted the little Inn, and pointed it out to them, and before long, they had three rooms booked and a menu in front of them. The menu was very interesting to say the least.

He hoped the locals never found out what he and his two young companions had done with the Macra in the tunnel. He was pretty sure they’d try to eat them for it.

Every main meal was crab.


End file.
